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argue that a lot of analysis is essentially thematic - but is either claimed as something else (such as discourse analysis, or even content analysis (e.g., Meehan, Vermeer, & Windsor, 2000)) or not identified as any particular method at all – for example, data were “subjected to qualitative analysis for commonly recurring themes” (Braun & Wilkinson, 2003: 30). If we do not know how people went about analysing their data, or what assumptions informed their analysis, it is difficult to evaluate their research, and to compare and/or synthesise it with other studies on that topic, and it can impede other researchers carrying out related projects in the future (Attride-Stirling, 2001). For these reasons alone, clarity around process and practice of method is vital. We hope that this paper will lead to more clarity around thematic analysis. Relatedly, insufficient detail is often given to reporting the process and detail of analysis (Attride- Stirling, 2001). It is not uncommon to read of themes „emerging‟ from the data (although this issue is not limited to thematic analysis). For example, Singer and Hunter‟s (1999: 67) thematic discourse analysis of women‟s experiences of early menopause identified that “several themes emerged” during the analysis. Rubin and Rubin (1995: 226) claim that analysis is exciting because “you discover themes and concepts embedded throughout your interviews”. An account of themes „emerging‟ or being „discovered‟ is a passive account of the process of analysis, and it denies the active role the researcher always plays in identifying patterns/themes, selecting which are of interest, and reporting them to the readers (Taylor & Ussher, 2001). 4 The language of „themes emerging‟: Can be misinterpreted to mean that themes „reside‟ in the data, and if we just look hard enough they will „emerge‟ like Venus on the half shell. If themes „reside‟ anywhere, they reside in our heads from our thinking about our data and creating links as we understand them. (Ely, Vinz, Downing, & Anzul, 1997: 205-6) It is important at this point for us to acknowledge our own theoretical positions and values in relation to qualitative research. We do not subscribe to a naïve realist view of qualitative research where the researcher can simply „give voice‟ (see Fine, 2002) to their participants. As Fine (2002: 218) argues, even a „giving voice‟ approach “involves carving out unacknowledged pieces of narrative evidence that we select, edit, and deploy to border our arguments”. However, nor do we think there is one ideal theoretical framework for conducting qualitative research, or indeed one 7
ideal method. What is important is that the theoretical framework and methods match what the researcher wants to know, and that they acknowledge these decisions, and recognise them as decisions. Thematic analysis differs from other analytic methods that seek to describe patterns across qualitative data – such as „thematic‟ discourse analysis, thematic decomposition analysis, IPA and grounded theory. 5 Both IPA and grounded theory seek patterns in the data, but are theoretically bounded. IPA is wed to a phenomenological epistemology (Smith, Jarman, & Osborn, 1999; Smith & Osborn, 2003), which gives experience primacy (Holloway & Todres, 2003), and is about understanding people‟s everyday experience of reality, in great detail, so as to gain an understanding of the phenomenon in question (McLeod, 2001). To complicate matters, grounded theory comes in different versions (Charmaz, 2002). Regardless, the goal of a grounded theory analysis is to generate a plausible – and useful - theory of the phenomena that is grounded in the data (McLeod, 2001). However, in our experience, grounded theory seems increasingly to be used in a way that is essentially grounded theory „lite‟ - as a set of procedures for coding data very much akin to thematic analysis. Such analyses do not appear to fully subscribe to the theoretical commitments of a „full-fat‟ grounded theory, which requires analysis to be directed towards theory development (Holloway & Todres, 2003). We argue, therefore, that a „named and claimed‟ thematic analysis means researchers need not subscribe to the implicit theoretical commitments of grounded theory if they do not wish to produce a fully worked-up grounded-theory analysis. The term thematic discourse analysis is used to refer to a wide range of pattern-type analysis of data, ranging from thematic analysis within a social constructionist epistemology (i.e., where patterns are identified as socially produced, but no discursive analysis is conducted), to forms of analysis very much akin to the interpretative repertoire form of DA (Clarke, 2005). Thematic decomposition analysis (e.g., Stenner, 1993; Ussher & Mooney-Somers, 2000) is a specifically-named form of „thematic‟ discourse analysis which identifies patterns (themes, stories) within data, and theorises language as constitutive of meaning and meaning as social. These different methods share a search for certain themes or patterns across an (entire) data set, rather than within a data item, such as an individual interview or interviews from one person, as in the case of biographical or case-study forms of analysis such as narrative analysis (e.g., Murray, 2003; Riessman, 1993). In this sense they more or less overlap with thematic analysis. As thematic 8
Page 1 and 2: Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) Usi
Page 3 and 4: Using thematic analysis in psycholo
Page 5 and 6: Using thematic analysis in psycholo
Page 7: from the corpus that is being used
Page 11 and 12: What counts as a theme? A theme cap
Page 13 and 14: Inductive vs theoretical thematic a
Page 15 and 16: Epistemology: essentialist/realist
Page 17 and 18: There are different positions regar
Page 19 and 20: As we have noted, the time spent in
Page 21 and 22: women‟s talk about the vagina). T
Page 23 and 24: Phase 5: defining and naming themes
Page 25 and 26: this question. They report four the
Page 27 and 28: needs to make sure that their inter
Page 29 and 30: methods like DA and CA, a simple th
Page 31 and 32: data into a quantitative form, and
Page 33 and 34: Edwards, J. A. (1993). Principles a
Page 35 and 36: Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). B
Page 37 and 38: Table 2: A 15-Point Checklist of Cr
Page 39 and 40: Data extract Coded for it's too muc
Page 41 and 42: Figure 3: Developed thematic map, s

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